The House of Representatives finally took a complete shape after the Election Commission on Wednesday announced winners of the elections under the proportional representation category.

The EC also submitted a report of the final Lower House elections results both under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) and PR categories to the President on Wednesday.

As per Act on Elections to House of Representatives, the names of the declared winners should be published in the Nepal Gazette to complete the process.

While 110 members were elected under the PR category, 165 under the FPTP system, giving the final shape to the 275-member strong Lower House and paving the way for government formation. As per the constitution, the House of Representatives is responsible for electing the prime minister.

“Having successfully held elections to local bodies, provincial assemblies, Lower and Upper Houses, we are closer to completing our tasks as part of implementing the new constitution,” said Election Commissioner Narendra Dahal. “The task will complete after we hold the presidential and vice presidential elections.”

As per Act on Elections of President and Vice-President, the presidential elections should be held within a month after the formation of House of Representatives and provincial assemblies.

The EC’s declaration of results of the Lower House elections under the PR category came 69 days after the second round of elections on December 7. The election body had announced results under the FPTP system on December 13.

The Upper House elections, held on February 7, paved the way for the EC to announce the PR results of the Lower House elections.

After announcing the PR seats on February 9, the EC had asked political parties to recommend candidates to be elected by February 12. Of the five parties, only two parties—the CPN-UML and the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum-Nepal (SSF-N) submitted correct list on that day.

The EC had asked the Nepali Congress (NC), the CPN (Maoist Centre) and the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJP-N) to come back with the correct list in two days after finding some errors in their first submission.

The Maoist Centre list did not include disabled person, while the NC had picked an extra candidate from the Khas/Arya community by cutting the number from the Madhesi community. The RJP-N had breached the order of candidates while selecting a candidate to be elected from the Khas/Arya community. After receiving the corrected list, the EC announced the winners of PR seats on Wednesday evening.

Under the PR category, the UML received 41 seats, followed by the NC with 40, the Maoist Centre (17), and the RJP-N and the SSF-N got six seats each to complete the 110 seats.

Together with the FPTA seats, the UML emerged as the largest party in the Lower House with 121 seats.

Despite performing poorly in the elections under the FPTP category, the Nepali Congress managed to become the second largest party in the Lower House with 63 seats on the back of the better result in the PR category.

The Maoist Centre, which forged the electoral alliance with the UML, completed the podium with a total of 53 seats. The RJP-N has 17 seats and the SSF-N has 16 in the HoR.

With the UML and the Maoist Centre closing in on party unification deal, they will have a comfortable majority with 174 seats to form the next government. The two parties hold two-thirds majority in the Upper House with 39 seats.

Nepali Congress revises PR list

The Nepali Congress (NC) has revised the list of House of Representatives election under the Proportional Representation that it submitted earlier to the Election Commission.

The change in the list was made as per electoral constituencies that party won in the election. Name of Mohan Prasad Pandey was removed to include the name of Ram Bahadur Bista while Rangamati Shahi replaces Deepsikha Sharma, according to the party central office. Bista and Shahi represent the backward regions.

Pandey and Sharma were included in the list from the Khas/Arya quotas. The EC earlier gave a deadline of two days to the NC to make corrections in the list, citing that it excluded the representation from the backward region. (PR)